PCB Vias

Dated：2017-10-16 Popularity：1223

If you only design single-sided board, you may didn’t know PCB vias. Only your electronics project becomes larger and more complex, you will realize that PCB vias are useful to keep the PCB size as small as possible with few jumper wires.

A via is the connection between the top and bottom copper layers. It is the conductive path that connects the selected top and bottom traces together. Vias are used for double-sided boards and multi-sided boards. There are many forms of via, such as blind vias, through vias, sub vias and buried vias. In this article, let’s look at its three main advantages for your PCB board.

PCB Via facilitates thermal conductivityWhen designing a PCB, you hope it is able to dissipate any heat from the microcontroller. This is most effectively achieved by using a heat sink. Expect heat sink, it is advisable to use vias because they help connect the top and bottom layers to effectively distribute the heat evenly across the board and contribute to heat dissipation. And this can be achieved by adding vias around the board surface.

PCB Vias for design flexibilityPlacing components in the schematic is relatively easy because no wires can pass through. When it comes to PCB board, unlike the schematic, traces must be manually connected to each other. This is a problem, because most of the traces cross each other, which is undesirable.Vias are used to solve this problem. These conductive holes are cut from the top to the bottom, allowing one to continue the required connection from the other side of the board. In the Eagle CAD, you can freely create circular or rectangular vias according to your preferences.

PCB Vias for great electrical conductivityVias can be used to improve the conductivity of a printed circuit board. For example, when all ground terminals are connected together, you can use vias at many different points to ensure that the path with the smallest impedance will follow the path by default.

PCB Vias for PCB strengthYou can change the strength of the board by properly using vias. For example, if you want a area of PCB to be more compact, you should add a via structure surrounding that area. You can think of it as some form of mechanical rivet.